Spanning a large portion of the sub-basement of The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Kimmel Cancer Center and Orleans Street Garage is a mechanical system that transports containers of supplies and equipment between the hospital and other buildings on the East Baltimore campus. It’s called a towline, and it literally performs much of the hospital’s heavy lifting.
Each day, underground and out of the view of patients and visitors, some 2,000 carts, loaded with a variety of supplies and materials, are placed on the towline for transport. They move, without the push or pull of a human, like cable cars along one continuous mile-long chain that’s situated on a track just under the surface of a massive cement floor, and stop at certain locations for their inventory to be picked up.
Routinely, the carts are loaded with prepared food items that must get from the Orleans Street kitchen to the cafeteria and to clinical units; heavy oxygen tanks needed for surgeries; and bins of letters and packages received at the hospital’s 22-bay loading dock for delivery to offices. The towline also transports containers of trash for disposal, mounds of bed linen for patient rooms, and surgical instruments for operating rooms.
“Our clinical staff and support services personnel rely on hot food, clean linen and a sanitary environment for the benefit of quality patient care,” says Colleen Cusick, director of materials management and general services, who oversees the towline. “Getting staff the items they need in an efficient and timely manner is important to our mission.”
As one of the few hospitals in the country with a towline, The Johns Hopkins Hospital relies on this engine to keep operations moving efficiently 24/7. “It’s a collaborative effort for all the areas that work together,” says Cusick, who began her tenure at the hospital as a nurse in emergency medicine.
Additionally, she says, “The towline reduces the potential for injury and the stress on staff to have to move large, heavy carts for long distances.”
Warning horns, emergency stop buttons and restricted-area signs all serve to protect staff members who work in the sub-basement level where the towline is located. The towline was designed to operate with minimal maintenance, but among the 170 employees on Cusick’s team are a welder, an electrician and a support specialist responsible for ensuring its safe operation.
When departments need to transport bulky items or large quantities of materials throughout the hospital buildings, someone must load the items into carts specially designed to run on the towline. An operator inputs the destination information into a touch-screen console, and the system directs the cart to its destination. (See a video clip here.)
The towline was built in two sections in 2004 and in 2011 to coincide with the opening of the 12-floor, 1.6-million-square-foot Zayed Tower and The Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children’s Center building. With technology updates, it will serve the campus for years to come. As part of its system maintenance, the towline will undergo a major cleaning and repainting of boundary lines May 12 to May 16.
If you have questions, contact Colleen Cusick at 410-955-4930 or [email protected]. For your safety, and to reduce any potential disruption to operations, follow all route changes and signs, and the instructions of the safety monitors.